Dancing as Juliet, Young and Old

In 2007, Alessandra Ferri danced Juliet just before retiring. Now, at fifty-three, she's returning to the role.

Photograph by MIRA / American Ballet Theatre

Ask any young female ballet dancer what role she’d most like to dance one day, and the answer is almost always the same: Juliet. “Swan Lake” may be the Mount Everest of the profession, but “Romeo and Juliet” is the ballet that dancers love the most. It’s not hard to see why. There’s the cinematic score, by Prokofiev, that tugs insistently at your heart, telling you what to feel at every moment. (If you close your eyes, you will still know exactly what’s happening onstage.) And that story—who hasn’t shed a tear or two for the young couple’s “bud of love,” crushed beneath the heels of Verona’s feuding clans?

Dancers can easily identify with its central characters, harder to do when you’re playing a princess or a swan. I’ve seen countless performances of the British choreographer Kenneth MacMillan’s production, from 1965, performed since 1985 by American Ballet Theatre. After the final chords ring out, the dancers stand in stunned silence, often with tears pouring down their faces. A few years ago, when David Hallberg—the most princely of American dancers, still, alas, recovering from an injury—and the Russian fireball Natalia Osipova danced it together, it seemed they might actually die, right there, in each other’s arms.

Suitably, a lot of ballerinas pick Juliet as the role they would wish to end their careers with. Alessandra Ferri, an Italian dancer with eyes like dark pools—like Giulietta Masina, in “La Strada”—danced it in New York in 2007, before putting away her pointe shoes, supposedly forever. But retirement didn’t suit her. Three years ago, she started dancing again, first a little, then a little more, until, finally, American Ballet Theatre decided, what the hell, let’s bring her back. On June 23rd, she pulled off an almost unthinkable feat, returning to the Met stage to dance Juliet at the age of fifty-three. Her footwork may have lost some zing in the past nine years, but she knows a thing or two about how to telegraph Juliet’s drive and the fierceness of her love. After the final curtain, the audience rose as one and cheered for twenty minutes.

At a matinée a few days earlier, a much younger ballerina, Isabella Boylston, débuted in the same role. (Débuts usually happen quietly, on Wednesday afternoons.) Ferri’s return was momentous, but so, in its own way, was this performance: a young woman on the cusp of an important career, stepping into her dream role for the first time. The night before, Boylston said, “I had a small melt-down.” She couldn’t sleep.

For some people, nerves create clarity. From the minute Boylston rushed onto the stage, there was a sense of certainty, of rightness, to her dancing. Where Ferri’s performance had flowed from her eyes and a longing lodged somewhere deep in her spine, Boylston’s was characterized by impetuousness and a thrilling physical freedom. The most striking effect was one of the simplest: the way she ran across the stage, unstoppable, barely skimming the ground. That, and a jump like a baby gazelle, showing no effort, just air.

Even though she’d been working with an acting coach and a former ballerina—Julie Kent, another great Juliet of recent years—Boylston hadn’t quite figured out, by showtime, what she would do at a couple of key moments in the ballet. One was the famous balcony scene, in which Juliet emerges to reflect on her first meeting with Romeo at the Capulets’ party. Boylston had watched lots of other Juliets, but “couldn’t find anything that felt right.” After watching Ferri rehearse earlier in the week, she sought out her advice. “You know,” the veteran ballerina told her, “there is no perfect Juliet, because Juliet is inside of you.”

The solution, it turned out, was simple. Boylston walked out onto the balcony, gazed up at the moon, and then rested her elbows on the parapet, lost in thought. Her elbows kind of stuck out, and that, too, was perfect. The naturalness of the gesture came as something of a surprise even to her. Dancers are meticulous preparers. They rehearse, and rehearse, and rehearse. “It’s crazy,” Boylston said. “I have this weird guilt, like I could have done more.” But then, in the moment, she knew exactly what to do.

In fact, the realness of it all, after weeks of preparation, was almost too much. Whereas Ferri looked serene and happy during her bows, Boylston seemed overwhelmed. She clutched at her Romeo, James Whiteside, a good friend (and a formidable partner). “I started crying in the third act and I couldn’t stop,” she said. After the performance, she could barely speak. She had another sleepless night. But the next morning, she felt ready to do it all over again. And she will.

One day, if she’s lucky, she’ll find herself in Ferri’s place. Time passes quickly for a dancer. Julie Kent, the ballerina who helped Boylston prepare for her début, retired from dancing just a year ago. “It hasn’t been that long,” she told me recently, “but already I can’t believe I was able to do what I did. I’ve come to the other side.”